Transocean Breaks Drilling Record

Offshore drilling contractor Transocean Ltd. announced on Tuesday that its ultra-deepwater drillship Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2 had set a world record for deepwater drilling by an offshore drilling rig.

The company said its rig had drilled to an ocean depth of 10,194 feet (3,107 meters) while working off the coast of India for Reliance Industries.

The depth surpassed Transocean’s prior record of 10,011 feet of water, set in 2003 by the Discoverer Deep Seas working for Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico, the company said in a statement.

The new record comes about one year after the Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2 was placed into service in India under a five-year drilling contract. The vessel is equipped to work in water depths of up to 12,000 feet and to construct wells up to 35,000 feet deep.

Transocean owned the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last year in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and setting off a vast oil spill along the U.S. Gulf coast.